I had an in-home demo. of this Player until it broke (Transport failure) and the Dealer took it back. It worked for nearly 3-days, and I thought that it sounded very good, highly-detailed but also very smooth and laid-back, not harsh or overly digital-sounding at all. SACDs sounded a bit strange to me, the CD layer of Hybrid Discs may have sounded better. Redbook CDs sounded excellent. I'm still curious about this Player, has anyone had long-term experience with this piece? Or compared it against the really good, sub-$4,000 SACD Players from Krell, Sony, Marantz or Esoteric (SA-10)? I'm shopping for the best sounding Digital Source Component available for less than $4,000. I would prefer SACD playback, since I own quite a few that I really enjoy. Thanks!

I know early 201s did have transport issues but I would have thought that they were all fixed by now. Maybe they missed your dealer's.

I have found that some SACD layers are not very good, especially on hybrids. Actually some SACDs are not any better than their redbook counterparts IMO. I think it depends on whether the SACD layer was derived from PCM or if it was a DSD recording from the start. But at the same time, some SACDs are freakin awesome.

I haven't been able to A/B the 201 to any others so I won't offer any comment on that.

I have not heard the 201 and I can't comment on it. but I can recommend you the Sony SCD1 or the latest XA9000es. I have own both (I now have the XA9000es, class A on stereophile mag).these are quality SACD players, built like a tank and sounded great especially on SACD. You can find one here at Audiogon for less than 2k.